‘Music feeds my soul,’ says Tullamore singer-songwriter Tolu

Even though she now works at what many would regard as a dream job in tech giant, Google, 23-year old Tolu Makay admits that she “absolutely loves music” and is looking forward to the day when she can work full time as a singer/songwriter.

Having made the long journey from her home country of Nigeria to settle in Ireland when she was very young, Tolu has lived in Tullamore for the past thirteen years and now regards the town as her home. She is full of admiration for her “strong mother” Yemisi who made the difficult and perilous decision to move from Nigeria to Ireland in order to give her family better opportunities in life.

“It was very hard for us when we came to Ireland first,” says Tolu “we were living in Wexford for a while and then we came to Tullamore and we have been here ever since, but we do try to go back to Nigeria every two years.”

Tolu, whose birth name is Toluope Makanjuola, just recently released her third single in eighteen months and has been receiving rave reviews for her soulful and introspective songwriting and singing talents from a whole host of music industry pundits.

Her latest single, “Ocean” which was released in August is accompanied by a beautiful video showing Tolu dancing on the beach. A “Hot Press” article on the new release described it as an “emotionally charged song which, though melancholic, is masked with an upbeat tempo and represents the loop effect of one's memories.”
Tolu admits that she spent many years living in what she describes as her “shy shell” and she began writing down her thoughts as a way of expressing herself which, in turn, led her to writing her own songs.
“I was very, very quiet and introverted as a child, and I suppose part of that had to do with all the upheaval in my life, moving from Nigeria, going to different schools, living in different places, and the only way I could make sense of it all was to write it down on paper,” she says.

She is reluctant to describe her written thoughts as poetry, as she says there was never a great deal of structure to what she wrote. “I was probably around 14 or 15 when I started putting my thoughts down on paper, and I just wrote down exactly what I was feeling.”

At the same time as she was writing, Tolu Makay was singing with a Choir in the local Redeem Church in Tullamore every week and was the leader of the youth group in the Church.

Redeem is a Pentecostal church and denomination which was founded in Lagos, Nigeria and has a presence in almost 200 countries around the world. Tolu says she was asked to join the Choir in the Tullamore Redeem Church when she was just ten years old and she admits to “absolutely dreading it” at first as she was so shy and quiet.

“My uncle adores music and he was always encouraging us to sing, because he knew we had good voices, but the first thing I had to overcome was my fear of singing in public and my shyness, which I eventually did,” she laughs.

Tolu attended secondary school at St Wilson's Hospital school in Mullingar as a boarder for two years, but she found it “very lonely” so she transferred to Tullamore College and it was during her time there that she entered, and won, the “Midlands Got Talent” competition in Clara, following in the footsteps of her younger brother, Tommy, who had been a contestant in the competition previously.

“Tommy encouraged me to enter it, and I sang a song from Etta James called ‘At Last’ so I gave half of the money I won to my Mum and used the other half to fund part of my third-level education in NUIG where I did a Degree in Psychology and Philosophy because I wanted to work as a Neuropsychologist,” says Tolu.

A two-year post-grad admission to Trinity was next on the cards, but the talented student had to drop out after year one due to a lack of funding to complete the course. “I was studying music and had a part time job as well so it was very hard to keep everything going,” she says.

The big music breakthrough for Tolu Makay came when she won one of the biggest gospel singing competitions in Ireland,

“Treasure Unravelled” and was given a one-year music management deal, vocal mentoring and the opportunity to record one of her own songs.

“It was like a dream come true for me,” she says “so the first song I recorded was “Reflection” which is a song about empowerment, self-love and retrospection.”

Tolu has been very influenced throughout her life by her mother, who represented her native Nigeria on the national softball team in her youth and who is also still heavily involved in volunteer work for disadvantaged families in Nigeria and brings food and clothing to them on her return trips home.

“She has laid a very good foundation for me and she sacrificed a lot to come to Ireland in order for us to have a better life, as the same opportunities are not available in Nigeria.”

It is this background that gives Tolu Makay's songwriting a maturity and insightfulness that is almost beyond her young years..“Music feeds my soul,” she says “and I want people who listen to my songs to connect with me and feel what I am feeling when I sing the words that I have written as the words come from my soul.”

Tolu's second single release “Goodbye” which is a song about resilience and about standing up for yourself was streamed almost half a million times, and that was without any music publisher, record deal or anything else behind her!

“I was just blown away by that, and while my job in Google pays the bills, I absolutely love music and I hope to be able to make my living from songwriting and singing eventually,” she says.

Tolu's new single “Ocean” is available to download now.